What they're not telling you about the indictments

It is unclear how much support conservatives will have in their effort. Rosenstein has become a punching bag for Trump and his allies as they vent frustration over the Russia investigation. Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein has overseen the Mueller probe, which is also examining potential obstruction of justice charges against the president.

But House GOP leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan have clearly been uncomfortable with the notion of going after Rosenstein.

Well, Ryan isn't going to be around forever, is he? The time has come to drop the petticoat and show what's underneath. We're heading toward open fascism, not the pseudo-stuff we've been living with since January, 2017.

Indicted. By now, you must know all about Robert Mueller's indictments. I have a problem with the way CNN and MSNBC covered this bombshell news: They continually made the logical error of presuming that chronology indicates causality.

To be specific, they kept replaying Trump's "Russia, if you're listening..." speech. Now, I am the first to admit that this particular speech was one of the two most idiotically self-defeating things that Mr. Blabbermouth has ever blurted. (The other Big Blurt would be the Lester Holt interview).

The speech occurred on July 27, 2016. On the same day, says the indictment...

...the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a thirdparty provider and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.

Cause and effect? That's the impression you received if you watched Chris Hayes last night. (By the way, Marcy Wheeler showed up on that episode and did a fine job.) That's also the impression you would form after reading this piece in the Atlantic.

Here's the problem: In that instantly-infamous speech (which, at the time, appalled most other Republicans, even Mike Pence), Agent Orange referred to the emails supposedly wiped after the Benghazi investigation. Benghazi happened years earlier, while Clinton was Secretary of State.

On July 27, 2016, the Russians hacked the Clinton campaign and her personal office. The hackers had already breached the DNC months earlier.

So we are talking about two very different things. How can we make Chris Hayes understand this fact?

Let's talk about the damned emails AGAIN. Trump and the Republicans have continually lied about those supposedly "bleached" 30,000 emails. Those messages did not concern the Benghazi incident, and they were not deleted by Hillary Clinton. The FBI recovered the majority of those emails and found that they were indeed unrelated to Congress' Benghazi inquest.

We've seen some of those deleted emails. They were piffle -- recommendations to read certain news stories, things of that nature. None were responsive to Congress's subpoena.

I wish to hell that Chris Hayes would remind his audience of that all-important point when he replays that "Russia, if you're listening" clip. Every time that bit of video shows up on our teevee screens, the smear is revived.

Trump's dimwitted followers don't understand the nature of emails. Bottom line: Unless you take very intricate precautions, there are likely to be multiple copies of an email message.

So why did Trump harp on that 30,000 number? Why did he make that "Russia, if you're listening" speech in the first place?

As longtime readers know, I favor the theory that hackers intended to plant incriminating fakes into a trove of "recovered" emails published either by Guccifer 2.0 or Wikileaks. This plan was scuttled when the FBI revealed on July 28 (the next day) that they had recovered many of the lost emails.

It simply would have been too suspicious if "horrifying" revelations showed up in the Russian batch but not in the FBI batch. Here's how I put it in an earlier post:

If you don't yet understand my point, let's try a thought experiment.

Picture this: Let's say you use a knife to mark forty pennies. Then you toss those forty into a big vat of 30,000 pennies. Then you pour out that vat into two piles: One pile goes to James Comey, while the other goes to Vladimir Putin. After that, Comey and Putin ask underlings to go through their respective piles in order to see which pile contains more of those forty marked coins.

Do you really think that all forty would appear in Putin's pile? Does that make sense to you?

I mean, yeah, it's possible technically. I've read books about gambling, and I know that it is possible for a tossed coin to come up heads ten times in a row.

But is it likely?

I think when the full history of the 2016 is finally written, we will learn that a plot to frame Hillary came a-cropper on July 27. Trump thought he was laying the groundwork when he gave that speech -- but then Comey ruined the scheme. The purpose of the plot was to credibilize those nutty Republican theories about Benghazi -- y'know, the ones that say Obama wanted the consulate overrun because he's a secret Muslim who hates America and Jesus and all that.

Spookery. The perception that Russia's anti-Clinton campaign began on July 27 is dangerous. Mueller's indictment clearly states that the ball got rolling much earlier.

It is also dangerous to presume that Russia acted alone, without aid from a faction within western intelligence: Cambridge Analytica was (is) an implausibly-deniable arm of MI6. In other words, Donald Trump is a gift bestowed upon us by both Bond, James Bond and Putin, Vlad Putin.

And let's not ignore Black Cube, which is Israeli.

You won't hear about "our" pro-Trump spooks from Robert Mueller or from Malcolm Nance or from anyone on MSNBC, but you're damned well gonna hear it from me.

One final point about Hillary's emails. The Republicans kept harping on the claim that a private server is inherently insecure. This assertion has always bugged me, since it used to be axiomatic that private servers are more secure. Not that it matters: All evidence indicates that Hillary used government channels for the truly classified information.

(Some material was classified after the fact, but that was just a slimeball GOP trick used to dupe the rubes who watch Fox News.)

If that server was so damned insecure, then why didn't the Russians produce those 30,000 emails? There are only two possible explanations:

1. They didn't hack into it, even though we've been told that they did.

2. They did hack into it, and found piffle.

Can you think of an option 3? I can't.

Name that writer. I don't know whether the following had anything to do with Trump's speech; the date is probably pure coincidence. Nevertheless, let us note these words from the indictment:

On or about June 27, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, contacted a U.S. reporter with an offer to provide stolen emails from “Hillary Clinton’s staff.” The Conspirators then sent the reporter the password to access a nonpublic, password-protected portion of dcleaks.com containing emails stolen from Victim 1 by LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and their co-conspirators in or around March 2016.

Who is the reporter? Whoever he or she was, he or she was a de facto Russian agent.

The truth about Guccifer 2.0 was well-known by July 27, 2016. If I had doped it out -- and I had -- then this unnamed reporter should have known. By that point, it was revealed that the first Guccifer -- the alleged Romanian cab-driver who hacked into George W. Bush's account -- was also a front for (or dupe of) Russian intelligence.

Roger Stone. Everyone knows that the indictment references him, though not by name. "You gotta know the territory," as they say in The Music Man. Stone knows the territory, making him invaluable to the Russian effort. Who knows how to manipulate an American election better than the King of the Dirty Tricksters, who happens to be Paul Manafort's old business partner?

(Check out the insane presentation here. Hilarious! The Stoney One sure is popular with those drooling Illuminati-spotters.)

That said, don't get your hopes up. Yes, Roger Stone will probably be indicted, and I wouldn't be surprised if the anvil drops fairly soon. But as long as Trump has the power to pardon, he's in the clear.

On the other hand, if there is an incriminating recorded telephone call between Stone and Trump -- as some have claimed -- then the promise of a pardon won't matter. As much as I would like to see Stone behind bars, the point is to catch the big fish.

In all likelihood, no such recording exists. Stone and Trump would probably discuss criminal matters only in a private place, face-to-face. These guys think like mafiosi. Mobsters have learned not to say certain things on the phone.

Bottom line: Some liberals have made the mistake of deriving hope from the indictment. Are they kidding? Did they even read this material?

Defendants OSADCHUK and KOVALEV were GRU officers who knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other and with persons, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.

(Emphasis added by me.)

My prediction of a red wave in November stands.

It used to be the case that election-rigging was plausible only in a close vote; a deficit of more than 3% (maybe 5%) could not be erased without creating suspicion. Right now, Trump is desperate and Putin is shameless. They will rig elections even if the Dem candidate is more than ten points ahead in both pre-election polls and exit polls -- and neither MSNBC nor Nate Silver will cry foul, for fear of losing credibility. (Fake polling outfits can be very helpful here.)

Besides, the Democratic primary vote in MI in 2016 was so obviously bogus that the vote manipulators now understand that they can be as bold as they like.

I'm all in for Chris Hayes conflating The Great White Dope's asking the Russians with the spear fishing attack if it motivates voters. Something Democrats need to catch up with republicans in doing.Why am I thinking that the reporter contacted works for the New York Times?Democrats are going to be a day late and a dollar short until they stop bringing a sport to a knife fight.

posted by Mr Mike : 9:17 AM

"Stone and Trump would probably discuss criminal matters only in a private place, face-to-face. These guys think like mafiosi. Mobsters have learned not to say certain things on the phone."

Yeah, but both these clowns each have an ego the size of the Graf Zeppelin, and can't restrain themselves from boasting. After listening to Donald's free form interviews and press conferences, it's obvious he hasn't the mental rigor to keep from speaking what's on his mind. Donald and Roger together could be a goldmine of a bragfest.

posted by Anonymous : 11:13 AM

Maybe so, anon. But it's never wise to underestimate a foe. I've suffered fewer disappoints after deciding on a policy of predicting the worst possible outcome.

Here's a crazy thought; why can't the military confiscate the voting machines now and put them in a safe place till the end of this investigation? I have a feeling they are not safe where they are now should a need for further inspection came up.JOE, there is a hospital in town( a system actually) they have it in for you. Your blog is blocked for inappropriate materials, they say. I tried every blog with the same political views, even the ones who use more racy language but everyone else is ok with them only you who is not. I find it curious, and funny.

posted by Anonymous : 2:05 PM

But they did find Clinton's missing emials on Weiner's computer. See Comey testimonyhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f259c43d70a3Comey states this where Feinstien says, "But they weren't there". Comey states the FBI didn't know how the emails got there. The Wiener computer is why Comey says he went public and changed the election. What role, if any, did the Russians and the NYC FBI play in getting the emails and then putting them on Wiener's computer.

posted by Anonymous : 3:52 PM

Anon 2:05 (and please don't be Anon), I privately received a similar message from another reader. Unless that reader was you.

I don't know what is going on. I did once publish a NSFW picture of Karl Rove's dad, but so did a lot of other sites. It was quite the scandal (or at least, quite the laff) at the time.

In my opinion the Conservatives think that Barack Obama was involved in some type of gun running both in Mexico and in Libya. What the conservatives won't mention is the possibility that the plan was to have multiple GPS sensors in the guns so that the US could track various drug cartels and terrorists groups via the gun running and smuggling. The conservatives may believe that if an investigation was done they knew that the Obama administration would have to keep quiet about the multiple GPS sensors and therefore be caught. If true, this would basically amount to treason by Conservative factions for trying to force a standing president to release information they know the President could not have released.This could be revenge for the Iran Contra controversy, one that included releasing one of the reports just days before the 1992 Presidential Election.Then in regards to Hillary Clinton, the Conservatives probably believe that Hillary Clinton made contacts as Secretary of State and possibly communicated with those contacts in regards to the Clinton Foundation. The Conservatives believe that HIllary Clinton probably handed over all the relevant emails to the FBI, but by the FBI not requesting all emails its possible that Hillary Clinton complied then destroyed emails on other matters that could have put her in hot water.Possibly the most frustrating aspect is I doubt the Clintons ever did anything worse than any Republican Conservative has ever done, so why the ongoing hate towards them? Perhaps because the Clintons are one the one family that has answer more questions under oath then any other political family, and once answered, they give opponents all kinds of opportunities to rehash all the interviews over and over and over again, simply because they exist.